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| Jessica Simpson at a recent book signing. Inset – Her new engagement ring. Picture from JustJared.com |
Jessica Simpson, of “chicken or tuna” fame recently got engaged. Her fiance, Eric Johnson, is a former Yale football player who majored in Investment Banking and then went on to a short-lived career in the NFL. The pair have been dating since May (he was still married, although legally separated from his then-wife at the time), and I feel that he is pretty much just a hanger-on.
When Jessica’s ex-husband, Nick Lachey of 98 Degrees (and hosting lame TV specials) fame got engaged last week, Jess dished out her congratulations and then managed to very quickly get a sparkler placed on her ring finger as well. Coincidence, I think not.
However – it’s pretty dumb to get engaged to try to steal the spotlight away from your ex (who is engaged to at least a D-list celebrity) by getting engaged to a nobody who is with you because you’re worth… wait for it… ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS. (That’s right, the woman who didn’t know the difference between chicken and tuna is worth $100million!)
The dumber part of that equation. Stating to the public that you DO NOT want a pre-nup. I mean sure, your fiance doesn’t want to get one – because he stands to gain $50million if you divorce in a year, maybe even more… but you stand to LOSE $50million if you divorce. Why would you NOT have him sign a pre-nup?
Coincidentally, yesterday my boyfriend, father and I were discussing pre-nuptial agreements. {And no, my boyfriend and I are not anywhere near close to becoming engaged. We were discussing other people getting pre-nups because it was on a TV show or something.}
My stance on pre-nups has always been that unless you are worth a LOT of money, and your significant other isn’t, and there is a good chance your significant other is just using you for your cash, then you don’t need a pre-nup. Call me old fashioned, but there is no reason to be planning for divorce before you even walk down the aisle. If two crazy kids fall in love, get married and then wind up hating each other in 5 years they can get a divorce and either fight tooth and nail over everything in their house, OR – sell everything (the house and the big possessions), split the profit and go their separate ways.
BUT – as noted above, the exception to this is that if only 1 of you are loaded (or, I guess, if you’re both loaded) then you need to protect what you went into the relationship with. Most people get married with little to nothing. Therefore, there’s nothing to protect. But if someone has a lot of somethings prior to the relationship, they should probably make sure that they are the one who is going to walk out of the relationships with the somethings. And not because rich people should plan for divorce and poor people shouldn’t. It’s more like – there is a very high likelihood that rich people are in relationships because their counterpart is very fond of their money, and less fond of the person themselves.
So Jessica Simpson – I forgave you for not knowing the difference between canned foods. I forgave you when you wore those atrocious mom jeans on national TV. I even forgave you when you pimped out your new marriage (the first one, to Nick Lachey) on MTV’s show “Newlyweds”. But if you basically throw out $50million, I don’t think I can get past that.